Apple IIc DIN conversions and monitor troubles -- tech assistance requested

["nameless" <nospam@execpc.com>]

Hi everyone,

i just spent a lengthy period of time perusing the FAQs, and while
it did provide me with some helpful info, i'm afraid i'm still in the dark.

First of all, i dug out my old Apple IIc and to my amazement i noticed
that the 5-pin DIN ports in back for the printer and modem will take
a MIDI cable.  So i fired her up, to see if there was something i could
do to program these ports for MIDI.

That's when i found out that my monitor isn't working so great.
The whole image is skewed severely (i don't remember what direction),
and since my monitor case was open already i poked around a bit
at the degausser but that didn't seem to help at all.  However, wiggling
around the RCA connection in the back of the Apple IIc didn't really
help, but it gave more of a response than anything else.  So, i fear the
RCA video jack could be shot.

I was hoping I could plug the RCA out from my Apple into the
Video In on my VCR to see if it looked ok on my TV, but i'm
assuming that i can't do that (since reading the FAQ).
Any ideas for a quick fix, besides trying to get my hands on an
RF connector?

But really, i'm not too worried about the monitor thing, i'd really like
to know more about the modem and printer ports, such as what their
pinouts are, and more importantly, can i bypass the ROM to write
my own drivers for them.  Luckily the middle pin is always the ground
right?  Because that's just how the cable is made.  But it seemed like
the rest of the pins needed to be rearranged a bit to make them
run MIDI ok.

I'm looking for some guidance here.
Does anyone think it would be possible to write some simple
assembly programs to control the data flow of the precise pins
of these ports?

any and all help is greatly appreciated.


(i might forget to check back frequently, so please feel free
 to CC any posts to me via e-mail.  my spam-retardant address is
  mighty [underscore] joe [underscore] young [at] yifan [dot] net )


thanks again.


~b


ps.  i just read somewhere that the modem port is set to 300 baud,
and the printer to 9600.  And although this source said something
about changing settings with an Apple IIc System Utilities disk,
i'm wondering if any of this can compensate for the difference between
this 9600 baud and the MIDI standard of 31.25kbps??

Is there anything that can be done about this?